Chupacabra

Chupacabra

August 2004

34 X 36 inches

Machine pieced, appliqued, quilted, embroidered; hand appliqued. Hand dyed, inked and drawn fabrics; commercial batiks. Created for Fiberarts Connection of Southern California 2nd Annual Fiberarts Competition

MYTHS and LEGENDS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
The Legend of Chupacabra

In 1975, the first reports of a strange creature surfaced in Texas, after several cattle farmers found dead livestock mysteriously drained of blood, with puncture-marks on the neck. Sightings increased in number in the 1990s, with hundreds of animals found mutilated and with the blood sucked out of them in Puerto Rico. The apparent predator was named "el Chupacabras" - literally meaning, "goat-sucker." There were reports of sightings of an alien creature-with red glowing eyes, bat-like wings, claws and long white teeth, with some witnesses saying they looked like panthers or gargoyles, but none were captured. By 2000, reports of similar deaths and mutilations had spread to Central America, southern US and to Mexico, and reports from Chile in 2002 had chickens drained of blood in the same bizarre way. Despite the horror of the killings and the strangeness of the sightings of the creature, if it exists, there is no definitive information about it. What is this creature? Is it an alien being? Is it a strange mutation? No one knows, but I imagine it has the same needs as all creatures: to raise and feed its young, to live and to enjoy its life, to hunt and find challenge and beauty in its existence.